Should Divots Be Considered Ground Under Repair?

[iacas]

As always this comes down to two things:

• The sport: sometimes you get a little bad luck, and you can’t legislate against luck.
• The practical: nobody can define “divot hole” in a way to make such a rule possible.

That’s it. And nobody has come close to observing those.

[ChetlovesMer]

43 minutes ago, iacas said:

As always this comes down to two things:

• The sport: sometimes you get a little bad luck, and you can’t legislate against luck.
• The practical: nobody can define “divot hole” in a way to make such a rule possible.

That’s it. And nobody has come close to observing those.

Seems to me if you even try to legislate against bad luck. You'd also have to legislate against good luck. 

Your good luck is just your opponent's bad luck and visa-versa. If you want to avoid it, you could always play on a simulator. 

Similarly, I would suggest that personally I far more often hit a terrible shot that somehow hits a tree and bounces back into a decent lie (sometimes even the fairway), or hit an off-line shot that somehow gets caught up in the rough and doesn't quite go OB or into a hazard. 

I don't actually know what the percentages are but I'll bet my lucky results on terrible shots way way way out numbers my unlucky results on good shots. 

[Ruler]

6 hours ago, iacas said:

As always this comes down to two things:

• The sport: sometimes you get a little bad luck, and you can’t legislate against luck.
• The practical: nobody can define “divot hole” in a way to make such a rule possible.

That’s it. And nobody has come close to observing those.

I did not read all the 65 pages but I'll comment on those two bullet points.

1. Agree. Sometimes you have good luck and sometimes bad luck. You just have to live with it.

2. Defining a divot hole has come up in every single discussion on this subject on every forum I have ever visited, so I would be astonished if nobody had touched the issue on those previous 64 pages. Nevertheless, that is the reason why divot holes can never be defined as GUR as there is no way how to draw the line. I truly wonder why this seems to be so hard to understand for those requiring free relief from a divot hole.

[iacas]

7 minutes ago, Ruler said:

2. Defining a divot hole has come up in every single discussion on this subject on every forum I have ever visited, so I would be astonished if nobody had touched the issue on those previous 64 pages. Nevertheless, that is the reason why divot holes can never be defined as GUR as there is no way how to draw the line. I truly wonder why this seems to be so hard to understand for those requiring free relief from a divot hole.

It's come up a hundred times here, too. I was summarizing the previous 65 pages.

[Never3putt]

It's really not that difficult to strike the ball in a divot, in most cases.

[ChetlovesMer]

It happened to me again this morning. My second shot on a par 5 ended up in a divot about 80 yards from the center of the green. 

The picture shows how my ball rolled to the front of the divot. 

Not a difficult shot, however. I hit lob wedge to about 9 feet. Missed the putt, made par. 

I really don't think it's that big of a deal to be in a divot. 

[ChetlovesMer]

I thought of this thread this morning again. 
My ball on the par 4, 14th ended up in this divot about 89 yards from the flag. Could the person who made this divot done a better job repairing it? ... Yes, probably. 

 

Here's another view of the same lie. 

I consider myself a below average wedge player, but I got this to about 20 feet with a gap wedge. I then 2-putted for par. 

Every time I or anybody else I'm playing with hits a ball into a divot I think of this thread. 

[iacas]

Mowers often throw or move the replaced divots, anyway. If that's from the previous day, you don't really know how well it was replaced or not.

[ChetlovesMer]

2 minutes ago, iacas said:

Mowers often throw or move the replaced divots, anyway. If that's from the previous day, you don't really know how well it was replaced or not.

Fair enough, it's definitely from the previous day as I was the first one out. Although the carts there have sand bottles in them, the maker of this divot could have filled it with sand. But, as you say they may have replaced it and the repair may have been "undone" by the fairway mower. 

That's not really my point. My point is bad lies happen. And every time they do I think of this thread. 

[DrvFrShow]

It's good to be back in "preferred lies" season again. This is something I don't have to worry about until May.